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The Changing Climate

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Surviving 1,000 Centuries

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Abstract

A century ago, captain Larsen, commanding a whaling vessel, discovered fossil wood on the Antarctic Peninsula, where nowadays only a few lichens grow [1]. Apparently, the climate in the remote past was much warmer than today. Recently, some crocodile-like fossils were found near northern Greenland — animals restricted to subtropical parts of the world. These fossils are some 90 million years old, dating back to the mid-Cretaceous [2]. At that time mean annual temperatures at polar latitudes were apparently above 14°C. After this high point a cooling trend set in, and by 30–40 million years ago an ice cap may have formed over the Antarctic continent which gradually increased in extent and is still there today [3]. Of course, one has to take into account that continents have moved over geological timescales (section 2.4), but these locations have remained at high latitudes over the last 100 million years.

I am far from supposing that the climate has not changed since the period when those animals lived, which now lie burried in the ice. Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle

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(2008). The Changing Climate. In: Surviving 1,000 Centuries. Springer Praxis Books. Praxis. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-74635-7_5

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